


when it gets dark

by ncfan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Speculation, Gen, Horror, Pre-Canon, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: When he is a small child, Ben Organa is afraid of shadows.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, we learn in the TFA novelization that a large part of why Ben fell to the dark side has to do with Snoke manipulating him through the Force from a very young age, possibly from infancy; psychic child grooming, basically. I was trying to guess how he might have begun at that, and hit on this.

When he is a small child, Ben Organa is afraid of shadows.

Oh, it’s not full dark that bothers him. The darkness is blind; if there is nothing he can pick out with eyes, there is nothing that can care to find him. It’s the shadows, those creeping things that found their way in through cracks in the windows and seams in the bulkheads, eating up the light and tearing it to ribbons. That’s what you have to be afraid of in this vast galaxy.

In the shadows, there are…

It’s useless to tell his father about it. Ben’s father, here one week, gone the next, is blind to the things he sees, deaf to the things he hears. He talks of nightmares, and overactive imaginations, and ‘ _Maybe you shouldn’t have supper so close to your bedtime, huh, kiddo?’_ These things cannot help him. Still, when his father’s ship is docked in the spaceport, Ben feels a little safer for sleeping in Chewbacca’s lap, Wookiee and human child sprawled in one of the big chairs in the living room.

His mother asks questions he can’t make sense of, strange questions about dreams and memories and whether or not Ben has seen things he knows are true, but cannot claim to have witnessed himself. When she asks, she stares intently into Ben’s face as though she thinks he might be lying, and when he answers, he can never tell if she’s happy with the answer. She just nods and turns away.

Their solutions are of little use when the shadows come seeping in under the door.

Ben has never known true darkness at night in his mother’s home, not but once, and according to her, that was only because the power grid for the planet was down. At night, the blinds are shut, and Mother adjusts the color in the windows so they let in less light, but there’s still speeders that go racing by, still the lights on the outside of the building. The room is bathed in gray and black, with white edging in at the window frames. Shadows twist and squirm at the door.

The noise comes first as though from far away, though it will be louder soon; it always is. Ben’s heart pounds beneath his flesh, as though it would like nothing better than hop out through his mouth and run away. He himself is rooted to the bed, the blanket like a leaden weight over his chest and legs.

It starts quiet, like an echo in the mountains when you drop a pebble to the ground. It’s the whisper of voices from another room, behind a shut door. But that echo grows to a din, and those whispers climb to screams. He doesn’t know the voices at the start, though he feels as though he should. Voices crying out in agony, calling out for each other, words that lose all meaning when they crash against the walls and ring out.

A reek of burning meat wafts up from the floor as though someone has burned something in the kitchen in the apartment downstairs, but stronger, and the smoke smell that comes with it is fouler than anything Ben has ever smelled coming out of that kitchen. His shoulders heave in a cough, his stomach turning at the stench. Red flashes before his eyes, and he is lying on the burning ground, every fiber of flesh in his body screaming in agony as the pale shadow of a man turns and walks away. He always walks away. Sometimes he is red-haired and wears white, and Ben does not know him. At times his hair is fair and his clothes are black, and his face is one Ben wills himself to forget in the morning. But no matter what, he always walks away.

Snapping back to his room finds Ben shaking in his bed, his skin awash with sweat. He opens his mouth to call out ‘Mother,’ but no sound escapes his lips. Instead, the noise presses closer around him, and oh, he knows these voices now. The shadows sprout eyes and mouths, greedy grasping things, and they tell him all about it. _‘We wouldn’t want you to miss a thing.’_

Morning dawns, and no one else heard a thing. Not Mother, not Father and Chewbacca if they’re there, not the droids, and not Uncle Luke if he happens to be visiting. For them, the night was quiet, and the shadows didn’t bother them.

 _‘You’re safe here,’_ Mother says, as she gets ready for work. _‘Nothing can hurt you here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.’_

But she’s not listening; she never listens. She doesn’t know the things Ben knows.

Sometimes, the shadows find their voice in daylight, too.

 _‘She cannot help you,’_ they croon. _‘You need a teacher, and no one here can teach you what you need to know. There is no one here to teach you. You must look elsewhere for your master.’_


End file.
